SEO Checklist – Why you need one?

This list covers the top 35 things you should consider when it comes to getting a new site live and into the search index.

The big mistake people tend to make is that they find a checklist, they go through everything on it and say “Oh no! I’m missing one thing – now I can’t rank and everything is ruined!”. That’s not really the way to think about it.

If you can get everything on this list, that’s great! If you can only get most, that’s okay too.

35 SEO Actions You Must Do Checklist

Please keep in mind that not all of these may apply to your situation. Check off the items as you go along.

Have you created an XML sitemap and submitted it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools? Use XML-­Sitemaps.com or the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

Have you created a robots.txt file and submitted it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools?

Have you checked Google’s Search Console for 404 / 500 errors, duplicate content, missing titles and other technical errors that Google has found? Make sure to keep up with any messages Google is sending you.

Are all of your title tags ~65 characters or less? Title tags over this will be truncated in results.

Are all of your meta description tags ~155 characters or less? Meta description tags over this will be truncated in results.

Have you used an H1 tag? Is your primary keyword included at the beginning of the H1 tag? Is it before any (H2, H3, H4…) tags? Are you only using 1 H1?

Do you have a healthy amount of text content on your site? My recommendation is at least 600 words so the crawlers will understand the topic of your page. Check serpIQ study on how 2000+ words content rank better.

Did you use synonyms and LSI keywords in your copy? Synonyms are great, and using natural language that’s influenced by keyword research (rather than just pure keywords) is highly encouraged!

Do your images have descriptive ALT tags and filenames? Search engines “see” images by reading the ALT tag and looking at file names, among other factors. Try to be descriptive when you name your images. Don’t overdo it though.

Is your content error free? Use Grammarly to check it or hire someone to proofread it.

Have you made sure your site isn’t creating any duplicate content? Utilize 301 redirects, canonical tags or use Google Webmaster Tools to fix any duplicate content. Also, check it on Copyscape.com

Social Media, Branding & Local SEO

Have you reviewed all of the free SEO tools at your disposal before completing this audit?

Have you set up social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+ and added them to your site?

Have you claimed your business/website username on other major networks for reputation management reasons? Not only do you want to make sure no one else gets your account name, but you can often “own” all the results on the first page of a search for your brand if you’re a new website or company. Here is the URL structure of some of the major networks:

Conclusion:

Ok, now you simply built a foundation that will help you optimize and grow your website in a healthy and profitable way. You should print this SEO Checklist and use it every time you launch a website or you do SEO for your customers.

SEO is a vast topic, however, I recommend you these articles if you want to dig more into this matter. I predict that on-page SEO importance will rise, overcoming backlinks so invest in yourself now, learn it well and you will be able to rank your sites in SERPS.

We welcome SEO experts to write for our audience. Now you can write for us and get published in Monetize.info magazine.

About Daniel S.

Daniel is the founder of MediaDigi.com digital agency and digital marketing manager here at Monetize.info. For over 12 years he has helped hundreds of customers to establish a presence online and win the digital race.

Haha. Yeah, SEO is not easy but as soon as you master it you can get large chunks of traffic as there are so many people that do the wrong things and they don’t rank..leaving the 1st spots for people that do the right thing.

SEO has been a thorn in my blogging side for, well, since I started blogging! I pinned this so I can reread it and take my time following the advice/steps.I can tell this is going to be one of my Holy Grail resources in blogging- thanks!

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